Three years ago, when my last book was published, I heard from a professor in Pennsylvania named Tim Slekar who asked if I would join the opt-out movement. I told him no. I thought it was too extreme. I don’t think so anymore. Testing has become extreme. It is now the driving force in education. The only way to make it stop is to stop cooperating with those who see children as data.
I support those who see children as unique human beings, not as Big Data or data points.
Testing is not teaching. It takes time from teaching.
Testing is valuable when teachers and students get prompt feedback and learn where students need help. But in New York, neither teachers nor students were allowed to see the questions and answers, only the scores. Of what value is that?
Peggy Robertson of United Opt Out informed me that her worthy organization has selected “Reign of Error” for its book club. That is great.
Opt out.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The Port Jefferson Station Teachers Association is also hosting one running through October and November. We represent the teachers in Dr. Rella’s Comsewogue District. All of our teachers, students, and community members are welcome, along with anyone outside of our community who wishes to participate.
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I should add that ours will be in-person meetings for those who live on Long Island.
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FYI: Related note. The Economic Policy Institute just released it’s report on RTTT; their conclusion:
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I totally agree with your comment and feel that standardized testing and starving the education budget are the twin evils that threaten public education. I wrote the following comment to an AJC article about the content problems with standardized testing:
Posted on AJC Blog:
Great work AJC- on taking the initiative to seriously look at these tests! Now you should go further and question the process that has gotten us into the mess we are in. Standardized tests are one of driving forces that are destroying public education. You have correctly discovered some of the flaws with test content, and most appreciated, you have examined the exams in an analytical way which gives an idea of the depth and breadth of the problem. What about the impact on education of the tests themselves? Standardized tests have taken the initiative of teaching away from teachers, making them robots that deliver content to children. There is no time for inquiry based learning or reinforcing student’s curiosity when the twin evils of large classes and standardized tests are present.
Tests can be useful when used by an instructor to monitor educational progress, otherwise they are at best a distraction or more likely an intimidation that threatens students and disrupts the real process of learning. As a science teacher for 27 years, I always made up my own tests, using mostly questions which required written explanations of a paragraph or two. On lab practicals students got to select a correct answer or provide a short answer to a question about a specimen. I took time after the test to go over the questions as soon as possible so those who missed a question would know the correct answers and what they did wrong. When I graded the tests, I recorded the statistics for each question so I would know which questions were most difficult for the students. If I had test questions that more than a few students missed then I flagged that content item for additional review and discussion with the class. If more that a third of the class missed a question, I considered that to be my fault as their teacher for not teaching the concept in an effective way. I then dropped that question from the test score of that test and asked the same content question (differently worded) on the next exam. That process kept me sharp as a teacher and gave the students real opportunity to learn. Education is (or should be) a learning process, not a process of judging and intimidating children. Standardized testing is a strictly judgemental and intimidating process. Worse, neither students nor teachers get the benefit of learning from their mistakes. Test results are delayed far to long to be of benefit in the learning process and the results of individual content items are not given to the students where they might actually be helpful in the learning process. Finally (since I taught an advanced science elective and could do so), I gave my classes an open book final exam with about 8-10 essay questions and a week to complete it. It was tough to grade but gave a very good idea of what the students had learned and gave them a chance to express it in their own words on paper. This was possible only because I could limit my class size to about 12 students.
I’m not sure how to ever get public school classes down to that small size range, but I think that limiting class sizes, and giving teachers the freedom to teach and make their own evaluations of students will restore accountability to the level it needs to be and will greatly enhance education. With the current testing process we are not educating children, we are bullying and intimidating them.
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“. . . about the content problems with standardized testing. . . ”
Well, Al, the problems with standardized testing are more fundamental than even the “content” problem. The fundamental epistemological and ontological flaws/errors in the process of making educational and standardized tests, the giving of the tests and the dissemination of the results in the tests render any resulting conclusions invalid or as N. Wilson puts it “vain and illusory”. He identifies thirteen sources of error in the process of devising and giving these tests that makes the usage of the results for any purpose UNETHICAL. Many others have pointed out the many failures of standardized testing regimes but any one of Wilson’s errors, let alone the thirteen he identifies, is enough to blow apart any reliance upon the results for anything.
Come join the Quixotic Quest to rid the world of these abominable educational malpractices by reading and understanding Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine. (updated 6/24/13 per Wilson email)
1. A quality cannot be quantified. Quantity is a sub-category of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category by only a part (sub-category) of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as one dimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing we are lacking much information about said interactions.
2. A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
4. Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other word all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
5. The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. As a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
6. Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms crap in-crap out.
7. And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it measures “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
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A bit wordy and somewhat pedantic Duane, But I admit, I passionately agree with you.
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“A bit wordy and somewhat pedantic”
Yes, in this sound byte era of instantaneous insignificant propaganda that passes for educational insights it is a bit wordy-not sure if you mean my summary or Wilson’s work.
If I stand accused of pedantry so be it. I’d rather be pedantic (had to go search to see if I had the right meaning, oops maybe that’s too pedantic) than guilty of the illogical type of thinking that passes for educational discourse these days. I prefer these synonyms: scrupulous, precise, exact, perfectionist, punctilious, meticulous to any others.
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Please take my last response with the correct amount of humor.
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It does seem like the state of New York has created a “Catch 22” for parents, children and teachers. One can opt out of testing–which I believe all parents should do for their children and the present and future of American public education. However, the catch is that teachers and children are stuck with Common Core Curriculum and teaching and learning to high stakes testing… Do parents then opt out and home school their children? Everybody loses, except Pearson…
#communityhomeschooling #atimethathascome
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researching the educational foundations of famous Asperger, er.. Einstein Syndrome people, we are finding that they were likely homeschooled, had private tutors or were apprenticed into their field of interest. Consider the following dissertation:
12 Nobel Prize Winners Who Hated School (essay) (excerpts)
Albert Einstein — born 1879, Ulm, Germany; died 1955 winner of the 1921 Nobel Prize in physics
. . . I worked most of the time in the physical laboratory [at the Polytechnic Institute of Zürich], fascinated by the direct contact with experience. The balance of the time I used in the main in order to study at home the works of Kirchoff, Helmholtz, Hertz, etc. . . . In [physics], however, I soon learned to scent out that which was able to lead to fundamentals and to turn aside from everything else, from the multitude of things which clutter up the mind and divert it from the essential. The hitch in this was, of course, the fact that one had to cram all this stuff into one’s mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect [upon me] that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year. In justice I must add, moreover, that in Switzerland we had to suffer far less under such coercion, which smothers every truly scientific impulse, than is the case in many another locality. There were altogether only two examinations; aside from these, one could just about do as one pleased. This was especially the case if one had a friend, as did I, who attended the lectures regularly and who worked over their content conscientiously. This gave one freedom in the choice of pursuits until a few months before the examination, a freedom which I enjoyed to a great extent and have gladly taken into the bargain the bad conscience connected with it as by far the lesser evil. It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wreck and ruin without fail. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty. To the contrary, I believe it would be possible to rob even a healthy beast of prey of its voraciousness, if it were possible, with the aid of a whip, to force the beast to devour continuously, even when not hungry, especially if the food, handed out under such coercion, were to be selected accordingly. “Autobiographical Notes,” in Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, Paul Schilpp, ed. (1951), pp. 17-19 © 1951 by the Library of Living Philosophers, Inc.
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So glad to see that you have changed your views on opting out. It really isn’t that “extreme” is it?
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